Tennessee senators Gresham, Kelsey offer alternative voucher bill

Haslam's limited bill again challenged with larger one

NASHVILLE — Gov. Bill Haslam said he prefers his limited school voucher plan but is open to compromise somewhere between his and an expanded version proposed Thursday by state Sens. Dolores Gresham and Brian Kelsey to allow income-eligible students from the bottom 10 percent of schools to get taxpayer help to attend private schools.

Haslam's plan limits vouchers to 5,000 students in the first year, from schools in the bottom 5 percent in terms of student performance on standardized tests — and increasing to 20,000 students in the fourth year.

Gresham, R-Somerville, and Kelsey, R-Germantown, agree with the overall number of vouchers — except that their caps would rise to 20,000 in year three, not year four — and with the governor's definition of low-income. But their Senate Bill 2025 would double the percentage of schools whose students would be eligible to apply.

Unlike the governor's plan, SB2025 provides that if the caps of 5,000 to 20,000 are not reached, the remainder would be offered to other income-eligible children but only in the same counties with schools showing test scores in the bottom 10 percent.

In both versions, only students whose family incomes qualify them for free or discounted school lunches are eligible — about $44,000 for a family of four. And in both, each voucher would be worth the per-pupil state and local funding required by the state's Basic Education Program for the school district in which the student lives and is zoned to attend.

In Memphis, that is around $8,000.

The bill's House sponsor is Rep. John DeBerry (D-Memphis), and Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, is co-sponsor in the Senate. DeBerry in 2012 took more than $100,000 in campaign funds from a pro-voucher group.

Haslam said Thursday he's open to discussing a compromise, and Ramsey said he believes "somewhere in between (the two) is where we need to end up."

Haslam said he proposed the bottom 5 percent because those schools are subject to state removal from local school district control and into the state-managed "Achievement School District," which assigns them to charter school operators to run.

"The reason we proposed the 5 percent is those are the schools we (the state) primarily are responsible for.," he said. "And there's been a lot of concern from school districts out there about the impact (of vouchers) on school districts, so we said we'll operate on ourselves first."

He emphasized: "We prefer what we proposed. We think our approach — let's start with these 5 percent we're responsible for, look at the impact, see what kind of gains we have and the impact on the school systems — is a good place to start."

More than 70 percent of schools in the bottom 10 percent are in Memphis, but nine other counties also have schools performing in the bottom 10 percent.

Ramsey supports expansion, but said the extra counties it adds will make it more difficult to pass in the House, whose members favor the governor's more limited plan.

"To say that students at A.B. Hill Elementary don't deserve school choice because their school is not in the bottom 5 percent is just wrong," Kelsey said. "This is a workable compromise that will help thousands of low-income children while still respecting the governor's concerns."

Last year, Kelsey and Gresham drafted an amendment that would have offered vouchers to thousands more students. The governor withdrew his bill when Kelsey refused to withdraw the amendment, and no bill won legislative approval.